How to Use Twitter's Vine App

Twitter introduced the Vine app on January 24. Adoption of the mobile service that lets you capture and share short looping videos has grown rapidly over the past several months. In fact, Vine is one of the top free apps in the iTunes charts.

And according to new research released by Unruly, there's an average of 5 Vine tweets per second. And the top Vines are already attracting more than 45,000 tweets.

It's also worth noting that creative video junkies with too much time on their hands aren't the only ones who are using the mobile video app. Vine is also proving to be a real hit with brands looking to utilize social video as part of their digital marketing strategies.

How do Brands Get Started?

A number of brands have already capitalized on the Vine platform by integrating it into their current marketing plans. This includes:

However, before you rush to the iTunes app store to download the micro-storytelling app, you will need a micro-plan.

At first glance, six seconds may not seem like much of an offering compared to longer-form social video options, but, in reality, six seconds is so short that people are likely to click through simply because they know it isn't going to be long or have a pre-roll ad attached to it.

How do Brands Use Vine?

Savvy brands recognize that the six second Vine video actually acts as the ad, in a very similar way as the 140-character tweet does. They can communicate and entertain users across various social networks and are less likely to lose consumers' attention than traditional advertising. (See "Twitter Vine: How 5 Brands Make the Most of 6 Seconds" for a few examples.)

Videos tweeted from Vine's Make-a-Scene app appear in expanded tweets and play automatically. Within the Vine app, the videos also include sound. When the videos are embedded in tweets, the sound is automatically muted, but users can press a button to un-mute them and enjoy the full experience.

Be Spontaneous: Whether you're giving fans a behind the scenes snap shot or a sneaky preview, Vine provides a great opportunity for brands to create a shared moment with their consumers and an intimate, authentic experience.

Make Emotional Connections: If you're going to use Vine to help promote your brand then creating contagious content which elicits powerful emotional responses is key.

Give your audience a reason to share: When creating the video, think about why people would share your content.

Use Vine for 'Tweasers': Whether your brand is promoting a new product, service or just generating awareness, six-second teasers (or "Tweasers”) are a great way of generating interest.

Hashtags are your friend: Hashtags are highly trackable, allowing you to accurately track the ROI of your marketing campaign efforts.

Vine in real time: As users flock to Twitter for all the latest news, trending hashtags have given brands the opportunity to engage potential customers with their highly shareable short videos.

Amplify your brand: If you want to get your content shared, then turbo-charge the viral cascade and increase your earned media potential by investing in paid media.

And if you're attending SES Toronto 2013 this month, then drop by the Meet the Experts Roundtable Forum in the Sponsor Showcase. Join the discussion at the Video Optimization roundtable to learn, network and share information with your peers and leading industry specialists about optimizing Vines.

About the author

Greg Jarboe is president of SEO-PR, which provides search engine optimization, public relations, video marketing, and social media marketing services. He's the author of "YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day," a faculty member at Rutgers University and Market Motive, as well as a frequent speaker at SES conferences.

If you use rich snippets to markup your videos, you may want to double check that Google is still showing them. Reports indicate a huge reduction – with estimates as high as 44 percent – in the number of video snippets from Google's search results.
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